Month: August 2021

Enlarge / The left- and right-handed forms of an amino acid. Every living thing uses the left-handed form exclusively. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

The central dogma of molecular biology holds that DNA gets transcribed into RNA, which then gets translated into proteins. Of course, there are exceptions—some viruses, like coronaviruses, forego DNA altogether and encode their genetic information in RNA genomes. Other viruses, like HIV, have RNA genomes that must be copied into DNA and then transcribed back into RNA before being made into proteins. But as a general rule, "DNA to RNA to protein" describes how information moves within cells.

A unique property of biological molecules is that they have handedness. Naturally occurring molecules occur in roughly equal mixtures of left- and right-handed varieties. This means that molecules can have identical atoms and shapes but cannot be superimposed one upon the other. Instead, they are mirror images of each other, like our right and left hands.

(This can be difficult to envision, which is why pre-meds taking organic chemistry in college spend so much time playing with those ball-and-stick molecular models.)

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  Coming exclusively to Hulu on September 13, 2021. [credit: FX ]

A TV series based on Y: The Last Man, the award-winning Vertigo comic series about a sex-specific apocalypse, has always seemed inevitable, but ever since the comic series wrapped in 2008, plans for a live-action adaptation have lingered in apparent development hell. That all changes next month, when a TV series finally launches on Hulu. The news came in the form of a trailer that shows off the series' stars while explaining its peculiar twist on a society-crushing disease.

The original comics, written by former Lost writer/producer Brian K. Vaughan (also involved with beloved comic series like Saga and Paper Girls), revolved around the simultaneous death of everything on Earth with a Y chromosome, humans and animals alike. Thursday's new trailer recaps the same premise by focusing on the president of the United States succumbing to a bloody collapse, followed by apparently every other man on the planet... save one.

That man, Yorick Brown (played by Ben Schnetzer), begins making his way across a decimated United States, and this TV version matches the comics by including his pet monkey named Ampersand (who also has a Y chromosome). Meanwhile, his mother, Senator Jennifer Brown (played by Diane Lane), apparently assumes control as president of the United States. That's a twist on the original comics, which had Yorick's mother in Congress but not necessarily promoted to the top of the pecking order.

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  New Nest Cams.

Google is introducing updates to the Nest camera line with a new version of the Google Nest Doorbell and several new versions of the Google Nest Cam. The company is also toning down the Nest Cam's restrictive business model, which previously has all but required paying a monthly subscription fee to get a useful camera.

We'll get to the new models in a minute, but the biggest news is that Google is making the cameras more useful without a monthly subscription. Previously, core camera features like recording video were locked behind a $6-$12 monthly subscription plan called "Nest Aware," but the new cameras can now record local video. You only get three hours' worth of "events" (motion detection, as opposed to 24/7 video), but it's a start. Google has also moved activity zones and some image recognition features from the cloud-based pay-per-month service to on-device processing, so they work without a subscription, too.

If you still want to pay for the "Nest Aware" subscription, it comes in two tiers. There's the $6 "Nest Aware," which gives you 30 days of "event" video history and facial recognition. The free tier can detect and alert you about people, animals, and vehicles, but the subscription adds facial recognition for "familiar faces" so Nest can tell if a loved one or stranger is at the door and alert you accordingly. The $12-per-month tier is "Nest Aware Plus," which provides 60 days of event video history and 10 days of 24/7 video history if you have a wired (not battery-powered) Google Nest Cam (the doorbell can't record continuous video).

Enlarge / A Coradia iLint hydrogen fuel-cell powered prototype railway train, manufactured by Alstom SA, travels in Salzgitter, Germany. (credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images)

If you were paying attention at the start of this century, you might remember the phrase "hydrogen economy," which was shorthand for George W. Bush's single, abortive attempt to take climate change seriously. At the time, hydrogen was supposed to be a fuel for vehicular transport, an idea that still hasn't really caught on.

But hydrogen appears to be enjoying a revival of sorts, appearing in the climate plans of nations like the UK and Netherlands. The US government is investing in research on ways to produce hydrogen more cheaply. Are there reasons to think hydrogen power might be for real this time?

A new report by research service BloombergNEF suggests that hydrogen is set for growth—but not in transport. And the growth has some aspects that don't actually make sense given the current economics.

Enlarge / The 2020 iPhone lineup. From left to right: iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12, iPhone SE, and iPhone 12 mini. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple intends to install software on American iPhones to scan for child abuse imagery, according to people briefed on its plans, raising alarm among security researchers who warn that it could open the door to surveillance of millions of people’s personal devices.

Apple detailed its proposed system—known as “neuralMatch”—to some US academics earlier this week, according to two security researchers briefed on the virtual meeting. The plans could be publicized more widely as soon as this week, they said.

The automated system would proactively alert a team of human reviewers if it believes illegal imagery is detected, who would then contact law enforcement if the material can be verified. The scheme will initially roll out only in the US.

The campus of the University of California, Berkeley, boasts three known wild populations of fox squirrels, who spend their days cavorting among the tree branches and foraging for sustenance. They've also now made a contribution to science, thanks to a series of experiments by UC-Berkeley researchers aimed at assessing how squirrels figure out whether or not to leap from one given tree branch to another.

In the process, the team caught several squirrels resorting to innovative moves, reminiscent of parkour, to execute especially tricky maneuvers, re-orienting their bodies to push off a vertical surface to ensure a smooth, safe landing. The team described its findings in a new paper published in the journal Science.

Squirrels are masters at navigating through the treetops, jumping from branch to branch without falling. "As a model organism to understand the biological limits of balance and agility, I would argue that squirrels are second to none," said co-author Nathaniel Hunt, a former UC-Berkeley graduate student who is now researching biomechanics at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. "If we try to understand how squirrels do this, then we may discover general principles of high performance locomotion in the canopy and other complex terrains that apply to the movements of other animals and robots."

Enlarge / Image of a BE-4 rocket engine on a test stand in West Texas. (credit: Blue Origin)

After more than four years of frustrating delays, Blue Origin is finally making significant progress toward completing development of its powerful BE-4 rocket engine. At present, engineers and technicians with the company are assembling the first two flight engines at Blue Origin's main factory in Kent, Washington.

The company aspires to deliver these two flight engines to United Launch Alliance before the end of this year, although that increasingly appears to be a "stretch" goal. Delivery may slip into early 2022. And in order to make this deadline, Blue Origin plans to take the somewhat risky step of shipping the engines to its customer before completing full qualification testing.

This delivery has been a long time coming. United Launch Alliance, or ULA, first agreed to buy the engines from Blue Origin back in 2014. It was a bold bet by ULA, a blueblood in space launch, on a new entrant to the market. But with the BE-4 engine, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos was promising a relatively low-cost, high performing engine with a power output comparable to a Space Shuttle main engine. At the time of this initial agreement, Blue Origin said the BE-4 would be "ready for flight" by 2017.